Archbishop Hiltz calls joint meeting “historic”

Mississauga, Ont. – The first joint Anglican-Lutheran national meeting in 2013 will be “a tremendous ecumenical witness to the whole church,” says Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada.

The “historic” four-day meeting will take place on July 3-7, 2013, at the Ottawa Convention Centre, Hiltz told members of the Council of General Synod (CoGS). The theme will be “Together for the love of the world.”

Archdeacon Michael Thompson, general secretary, urged CoGS members to be open to change. “It will be different and exciting,” Thompson said at the fall meeting of CoGS, held here Nov. 18-20. “There will be conversations about the future” and the meeting will have “a great capacity to refresh the discourses of the two churches,” said Thompson.

“Each church is ‘letting go’ of some of its traditional planning models; each church is adopting new ways of looking a Synod/Convention planning, and each church is risking, in faith, some new and unknown territory,” said a written report to CoGS by Dean Peter Wall, chair of the General Synod Planning Committee.

Some CoGS members expressed concern about what issues and work will be given up because of time constraints, while others stressed the importance of “keeping community” among Anglican delegates who attend the triennial meeting. The last General Synod was held in Halifax from June 4-11, 2010.

A joint planning group has already met several times and visited the convention site.

Among other things, joint worship, joint mission work, and a joint “witness event” on Parliament Hill are being planned.